Month: April 2008

Primo, is a one man play based on the memoirs of Primo Levy; A survivor of .

I have to say Anthony Sher’s performance and adaption of the memoirs is amazing, I started watching the program by accident, and couldn’t believe how engaged I was within a few minutes, it is very evident that Sher has stage presence and convincing portrays the persona of Primo.

People often stray away from such awkward subject matter, either fearing a backlash or believing they wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Fortunately Primo suffers neither, and should be a watch for everybody. Its honest and brutal, without employing any other actors other than Sher himself.

I should start by reiterating my statement “2008 is going to be a good year for British Cinema”

3 and Out is what many people have come to expect from Dark British Humor, and that respect it doesn’t disappoint. However, it has some rather intersting twists ands turns, and doesn’t end anywhere where you would expect it to. Its honest and funny in the places where it is appropriate, but most of all its an enjoyable if somewhat tense watch.

Verdict

Enjoyable and Tense – If you want out and out comedy this is not a film for you, but if you want a serious yet funny film, get yourself into a cinema.

Gone are the days where you can launch a e-commerce site and be successful just because you are there and there is nobody else. Its a cut throat market and its all about how people see you. Here are my top tips for getting noticed and getting your plan right from the beginning and what to realise before you hit the road.

Tip #1 : Get your design and look right. This seems a pretty obvious one but you would be surprised the number of sites that have poor design, whilst there are exceptions to the rule some sites are really poorly designed yet still manage a decent turnover (this is usually due to the companies adwords spend being an obscene number)

When a person first hits your site they immediately judge the quality and security, people now seem less bothered about SSL (because anybody can get one) and more bothered with a good design that looks as if the company cares and most importantly isn’t there to scam you. Also attributed to good design is it makes the users want to look through your site and most importantly buy and return to the site.

Tip #2 : Payment Options. This is heavily dependent on your particular circumstances but you should have as many payment options as you feel confident with being able to manage.

Pay-Pal – Should be your first port of call when setting up – it gives immediate credibility and web users feel safe using it.
Credit/Debit Card – Most important aspect to this is make it simple, there are a number of services such as Protx that provide a system that palms off you to another site to process credit cards. This method of processing cards is poor, because it doesn’t allow you to have control over all the process and also does not maintain you image. The ideal system is being able to process the cards without taking the user away from your site, which usually means posting a request to the credit card processing company and they then send an appropriate reply. There can be issues with the as you may be required to be audited by your merchant bank to ensure security.

Tip #3 : Pick your niche & Exploit it. This is were a lot of web start-ups fail and fail hard. There is no longer any market to be a one stop shop for everything, unless you have some serious capital it is unlikely that you can compete with the Amazons’ and ebuyers’ of this world. Stay small and specialise, there is a niche for everybody, and if your good enough at support and developing your corner of the net you will be successful. I know this isn’t a particularly valid point of view for the bank manager, but the most successful companies generally follow the ‘Build it and they will come’ monica.

Another benefit of exploit a specific niche is that you will quickly gain creditability and notoriety within that field, this leads ultimately to more business.

Tip #4 : Google works for You, not You work for Google. Adwords is a very interesting proposition for anybody online, the ability to target practically everyone on the net. The most important thing to remember is, You shouldn’t spend loads of money with Google, you want it in your bank account.
Start small, run one campaign and target it to a small geographical area then when you are comfortable expand it. You shouldn’t follow the tradition ‘you get what you pay’ for system with adwords, if you pay more it does not guarantee that you will be the at the top of list, it guarantees your bank balance stays low and makes Google some money.

And Finally: Don’t stay still, the web changes daily. Make it your business each day to find out what way the wind is blowing, and adapt accordingly.

Live Mesh puts you at the center of your digital world, seamlessly connecting you to the people, devices, programs, and information you care about – available wherever you happen to be. www.mesh.com

Microsoft being its usual self has joined the web 2.0 party, and looks as if the Yahoo! bid was a hint at a much larger plan.

So what exactly is the significance of Mesh and the whole Microsoft online play? Its validated a couple of ideas cloud computing is definitely going to have a massive impact the way in which we interact with both mobile devices and laptops/desktops, and also Microsoft has seen a little sense and is bending to the will of user.

Office Online?

An obvious application that Microsoft will put into mesh is Office, quite frankly the current online offering is underwhelming and Google Docs beats it, but in mesh with a cross-platform version of office that follows you I would be willing to pay for that.

Did I here you say Cross-Platform?

Along with the announcement of Mesh some other intersting things came out of the tour, support for Macs! Is this a much bigger plan to get out of the Operating System business or transition to providing a thinned out operating system that can access mesh (They may even use an Open Source kernel)

I think Microsoft has got themselves some new friends and I will be sure to check out Mesh in more detail very soon. Its going to interesting if they do it right…